Happy George Washington Day!
It is day eight of Heritage History Month and it is time for us to have an American founding father on the list. There’s no better person in this regard to start with than George Washington. It’s difficult to capture the essence of Washington in a few paragraphs.
In many ways, Washington is sort of the embodiment of the mainstream of the American revolution, exemplifying its substance in body and spirit. Sure there were the Paines of the enterprise—goofy Utopians with no rooted nature of their interest in liberty— but there were also the Aristocrats, like Washington, whose character and soul reflected the best of American nobility. Washington was both a refined gentleman, a landowning son of the upper classes, as well as a trained athlete, soldier, hunter, and master horseman.
One of Washington’s most legendary achievements—without which the American revolution would have failed—was his crossing of the Delaware on Christmas night 1776. Not many of us appreciate the burden he bore that night. Washington was well attune to his role as a leader of men— to look out for their well-being and to see them as have been entrusted by Providence to his care. This had to be balanced with the very real political ramifications of the loss of a military confrontation with England— ramifications that could vibrate throughout the entire structure of colonial life.
His plan of course was to gather the various divisions of his army along the bank of the river before sunset on Christmas Day, move weary soldiers and heavy weaponry on ferries and rafts (!!) to the other side by midnight, march ten miles to Trenton by 5am, and surprise a large group of British-hired German mercenaries in a pre-day break attack. All this was to take place in the dead of winter, in the dark sub-freezing black night, in the icy-laden river, with hungry, frozen, despairing troops. His men didn’t know the plan—for strategic reasons, he kept it secret.
The plan, on its face, was preposterous. The reality was far worse. Many of the divisions couldn’t make before sunset to prepare. So they had to do so in the dark, at enormous speed, during a severe snow storm. Three hours behind schedule, his mind no doubt tormented by what he was asking his men to do, Washington made the world-historical decision to proceed. His men pushed forward.
What kind of man could inspire this? What sort of leader could instill in his men a type of faith to push through such dreadful circumstances?
It is well known both that Washington, after the War had been won and even later after the Constitution had been ratified, preferred to retire on his estate and manage the affairs of his land holdings—passing up numerous opportunities for political power. Such emotional distance to power made him even more heroic in the eyes of the people. We today remember Washington as a selfless man of integrity, intent on doing what was right, with the skills he had been given, to further the causes of his people.
Washington’s own take on the nationalist-decentralist debate is fascinating, as he was a Virginian. I personally am known to be much more of a decentralist, but one of the things I learned in writing this was that Washington’s compromise between the two positions had nothing to do with his preference for centralization as a mere power-tool, but rather that he recognized early on that there was a hidden infection in many of the decentralists that caused them to be more Jacobin and culturally revolutionary in nature. This of course does not describe people like Patrick Henry and Edmund Randolph.
Washington in many ways held the two factions together, denying to the John Marshalls their complete centralization power-grabs, and to those infected with the French Revolutionary spirit their own permanent revolution. Washington was always the glue that held Americans together. From the Delaware crossing to the post-Constitution framework, and into the century that followed.
Let us close with the reflections of Robert E. Lee’s grandfather, Harry Lee, in Washington’s funeral eulogy:
“First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen, he was second to none in the humble and endearing scenes of private life: Pious, just, humane, temperate, and sincere; uniform, dignified, and commanding, his example was as edifying to all around him as were the effects of that example lasting.
To his equals he was condescending; to his inferiors kind; and to the dear object of his affections exemplarily tender: Correct throughout, vice shuddered in his presence, and virtue always felt his fostering hand; the purity of his private character gave effulgence to his public virtues.”